


Decay

by draculard



Category: Fengriffen - David Case
Genre: Animal Death, Dubious Consent, F/M, Ghost Sex, Masochism, Psychological Trauma, Rape Aftermath, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rough Sex, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:06:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25777879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: “But it feels good,” Catherine whispers. “God help me, but it feels good. It feels better than any moment of passion I’ve ever had.”
Relationships: Catherine Fengriffen/Charles Fengriffen, Catherine Fengriffen/Incubus
Kudos: 1





	Decay

The next morning, the smell of decay has settled into Catherine’s hair. She brushes rose oil into her locks to no avail. In the mirror, she sees her own paleness  — and the bruises on her cream-colored neck  — and looks away.

But her hand comes up, delicate fingers prodding the tender flesh. In the center, where the bruise is darkest, she digs her knuckles in and closes her eyes, lips bitten, over the sweet corresponding bloom of pain.

“But it feels good,” Catherine whispers. “God help me, but it feels good. It feels better than any moment of passion I’ve ever had.”

* * *

Charles tries. He knows her well enough to tell that something’s off. At night, before he even brings himself to full arousal, he kisses her gently, rubs soft, warm hands over her chest  — brushes her nipples  — spreads her thighs and applies his lips and tongue the way he thinks she likes it.

“Harder,” she tells him, but he doesn’t listen. He thinks it’s a kindness that he doesn’t, and maybe it is. If she put his wrist to her nose and breathed deep against his pulse point, she could smell the violence in his blood.  _ Harder, _ she tells him, and if he listens he unlocks someone he thinks she doesn’t want.

A man who rapes his servant’s bride.

A man who watches as his victim grinds a dull axe blade against her vocal cords.

A man who pins his servant to a stump, who swings the axe, who takes his servant’s hand.

Thinking about it makes warmth bloom between her legs just as Charles dips his tongue inside. His fingers tighten on her thighs; his efforts grow more frenzied. He thinks he’s accomplished something. He doesn’t realize that she can barely feel his tongue at all.

She touches the bruises on her neck, thinks of the foul spirit who visited her last night, and sighs.

* * *

October at Fengriffen is cold and gray, and Catherine loves it. She’s lost weight since the spirit visited her; she feels the cold more sorely now, and she adores it, seeks out every opportunity to invite it in. As she walks, she rubs the pad of her thumb over her index finger and feels three hard little bumps there  — red sores, almost invisible to someone who doesn’t know they’re there, who doesn’t feel the pain when she touches them. Chilblains.

The weight loss helps her explain the bruises, too. When Charles undresses her and sees the dark spots on her hips, her thighs, she tells him, “I don’t know where they came from,” but he looks at the sharp outlines of her bones and she can see the logical little gears of his brain turning to what he thinks must be the right conclusion. 

She goes for long walks alone in the evening, when the sky is grey. Leaves rustle along the packed dirt path and catch on her un-dusted, dirty shoes. She doesn’t let Mrs. Lune clean them anymore; she likes them smudged. Besmirched.

She walks past the Fengriffen graveyard. She walks to the edge of the trees, where the woodsman lives. The scent of decay calls to her  — a hallucination, she thinks at first, but it grows stronger as she turns down the western path, and soon she realizes this smell is real.

She comes across it suddenly: a dead little linnet bird, wings broken, feathers bent. She crouches next to it, adjusting her dress automatically, and sees what killed it  — someone has twisted its neck.

Someone has twisted its neck over and over again, until the bird’s skin split open, until the tendons underneath sprung apart. Only a narrow strip of flesh keeps the head attached to the body.

Catherine picks it up with gentle fingers. She lifts the linnet to her face. She buries her nose in its exposed, rotting wound, and breathes in deeply.

It smells like him.

She pulls back with a smear of black blood on her nose and lips, with tears glistening in her eyes, with a warm heat burning between her legs.

“God help me,” she whispers.

* * *

That night, he comes again, and though she cannot see his form, she opens her mouth  — welcomes the suffocating weight against her naked body  — breathes in deep and relishes the scent of decay. The sounds coming out of her mouth are not screams. 

“Hurt me,” she breathes.

It understands what Charles doesn’t. It hurts her; it can’t help it; it hurts her deeply even as it makes her come. 

And then it pulls away, and there’s a moment before it fully leaves where Catherine can move again. She reaches out blindly, her fingers searching for that retreating mass.

_ Stay,  _ she wants to tell it, but when she opens her mouth, she tastes rotten flesh on her tongue and gags.

Her reaching hand grabs nothing but air.

  
  



End file.
